At tea on day four, the hosts are 212-5 in their second innings and there are a minimum of 32 overs left in the game.
Will Young has 91 and Lewis McManus 12.
Northamptonshire resumed on 123-3 after lunch having weathered the loss of those three early wickets.
Will Young and Rob Keogh continued a stand worth 44 and endured few alarms in the afternoon sunshine.
Keogh took two leg-side boundaries off a Dom Bess over, while Young worked the ball well on both sides of the wicket.
Yorkshire missed a chance to remove Young on 62 when he edged Haris Rauf through a vacant second slip region, a gap then immediately plugged by the visiting team.
Yorkshire had gone almost three hours without a wicket when George Hill finally broke through with his first delivery.
Bowling from the David Capel End, having been kept back until the 73rd over, Hill induced a leading edge from Keogh which was taken by captain Steve Patterson at short extra-cover.
Keogh’s departure for 48 from 124 balls with six fours ended his stand with Young at 99 and left Northants 178-4.
That became 195-5 in the final over before the second new ball was available when spinner Dom Bess trapped Luke Procter lbw on the back foot for 13.